


Humble Beginnings

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Animal Instincts, Animal Transformation, Banter, Beginnings, Developing Friendships, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, First Meetings, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, Ice Cream, Injury Recovery, Kindness, Loss of Parent(s), Major Illness, Movie Night, New Family, Nicknames, Platonic Relationships, Pre-Canon, Self-Discovery, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-18
Updated: 2019-01-18
Packaged: 2019-10-11 16:09:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17450132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: How Garfield came to be with his first family and how he learnt who he really was and where he belonged- he just never expected to be in a mansion filled with people of the... less than normal variety. And he absolutely never expected to be one of them."The thought most prominent in Garfield's mind was to roar. So he did."(A prequel to 'Fall on back, fall on back' where Gar meets the Doom Patrol and has his life changed for the better)





	Humble Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this is alright. I wanted to include more but the last time I did something like this for Critical Role it was really long and not many people read it, so I thought it I shortened it up a bit than it would be more manageable. 
> 
> This is actually for @RestlessSoul who was not only willing to wait a while for me to finally get this out but was happy to have it be a little on the long side, so thank you for that. It made me less worried about the length of this and I actually included more than I was going to. I hope it was worth the wait. 
> 
> And if anyone else was waiting for more Doom Patrol/Gar getting the love he deserves, well then I hope you aren't too disappointed. I know the summary is pretty shit and that EXACT comment isn't in the fic, I still hope you made it this far. Thanks so much xx

“I must warn you,” Chief announced as he held the door open for Cliff who carried the unconscious boy gingerly in his arms. “The serum I used on him was previously untested. It may still have unknown side-effects.”

Larry snorted as he carried Chief’s case through the door after them and placed it on the metal table beside the cot in the medical room. “More than turning his hair green and making his face shift? I’d like to see that.” Rita elbowed him in the ribs as she passed him and pulled a thin navy blanket out from the shelf to lay it over the shivering boy once Cliff had placed his fragile cargo onto the metal cot. Larry fixed the pillow under his head as Rita tucked him in and Chief walked around to the other side of the table. “Where did you find this one?”

“Congo,” Chief pulled alcoholic swaps and sterile IV needles from the drawer and went through the motions of sticking them through the boy’s skin. Beneath him, the unknown boy didn’t stir. “A remarkably surprising find. He was one of the many infected by the bite of a rare primate appropriately named the ‘green monkey.' He was one of the few still surviving but his caretakers left him to die when it became too much for him. I brought him here as soon as I could.”

“What the fuck were you doing in Congo?” Cliff asked gruffly as he re-entered the room, a fresh pair of clothes folded neatly over his arms. “I thought you were going to Zimbabwe for that girl who got cut up by the broken conveyor belt.”

“I was, but I had heard word that she had already succumbed to her extensive wounds.” Chief took the gloves from Rita’s outstretched arms as he spoke. “I made a detour to Congo once I was aware of the outbreak. I’m glad I did; I don’t know how much longer this one would have survived.”

Rita ran a white-gloved hand gently down the boy’s face as he slept, green-tinted face buried into the pillow, jerking every so often. “What are we going to do with him?”

“He will stay here.” Chief declared like it was obvious and in a round-about sort of way, it actually was. “Until we understand the extent of his illness, we will see him through his recovery and offer him a place here with us if he chooses to take it.”

Nodding, Larry patted Cliff heavily on the back and rested his hand lightly on Rita’s shoulder before disappearing up the spiral staircase with the shouted elaboration of, “I’m going to get dinner ready. I hope he’s dressed in jammies by the time I come back or I’m going to do it myself, poor kid.”

* * *

 Rita is looking over him when he first woke up, a book in her slightly formless hand as she sat awake for the nightly watch. He sat up with a gasp and clouded over eyes as he reached his hand up to take hold of the breathing mask placed securely over his face. The sudden noise startled Rita and she lost some control of the muscles of her face and the boy made a strangled sound back in his throat at the sight. “Don’t worry!” She reassured in her calmest voice. “I’m not going to hurt you. I know I look a little weird at the moment but I promise you’re in safe hands.” She flashed him a smile. “My names Rita. What’s yours?”

His fear-filled voice was shaky and rough as it came up through his raw throat. “Garfield.” He muttered, bleary eyes fixed on Rita’s face. “Logan.”

“Well, Garfield Logan, it’s very nice to finally meet you,” Rita placed a warm hand on Garfield’s shoulder. He glanced down at it with wide eyes but didn’t try to pull away. “The others would like to meet you as well. I won’t call them down right now because you need to rest, but I suppose I should warn you in advance that we may look like monsters but we’re really not.”

Sniffling, Garfield nodded as much as the wires would allow, and slowly let his eyes shut. “You don’t seem so bad for monsters.”

Humming, Rita gently ran her hand through Garfield’s wild green hair as he began to snore and once all his vitals fell back to even on the monitors, she stood to go fetch Chief.

* * *

 A week later, Larry was helping Garfield sit upright against the pillow’s as she spoon-fed him bowls of his vegetable soup. Garfield still wasn’t strong enough to hold anything in his shaky hands so Larry had demanded, much to Garfield’s embarrassment, that he sit back and let himself be fed. Garfield, once he was well enough to speak had explained to them that because of his parent’s profession as zoologists, he felt uncomfortable eating animals and Larry had reluctantly put the chicken for his chicken noodle soup back into the fridge.

“Thank you for… taking me in.” Garfield muttered as Larry scrapped the last of the bowl and put the final spoonful into his mouth.  “That was very kind of you.”

“No sweat Gar- can I call you Gar?” Larry asked. Garfield nodded. “Chief takes in all the people who need him. He took in me and Rita and Cliff. We’ve got the room in this huge fucking house so one more person isn’t going to matter.” He shrugged. “And maybe we need someone younger here with us, get us back our youthful jive.”

Snorting softly, Garfield rolled his eyes. “What are you guys? Why are you all here?”

“Well, we’re basically a bunch of fuck-ups who got hurt really badly and nobody could be bothered caring for us anymore. Said we were doomed.” Larry placed the empty bowl in his hands onto the metal counter beside him- which Chief would be furious about if he ever discovered it- and leant back in his chair. “Chief, the brilliant man, came to us with cures and brought us here to our new home. We’ve been a family ever since.”

Despite his confusion and the circumstances he was in, Garfield couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a quick-witted joke. “You guys are like a Doom Bunch. A bunch of doomed people.”

Larry tilted his head back and forth as he considered it. “You know kid, I like you. That’s a really good name. I’ll let Cliff know and he can put it up on the wall of suggested names.”

“Who’s Cliff?” Garfield had to ask, the name coming up many times over the course of his bed-ridden stay in the medical room of his apparent new home. “I don’t think I’ve actually met him yet.”

Apparently surprised, Larry leant his head all the way back against the chair and looked around the room in shock. “You haven’t met Cliff yet? What an asshole. I told him to come down and meet you but he must have only come down when you were asleep. Don’t worry. I’ll fix his little red wagon.”

Garfield tried to stifle a chuckle with his hand but failed miserably. “That sounds great. If he’s anything like the rest of you I’m sure we’d get along fine.”

Standing, Larry picked up the bowl and bowed theoretically to Garfield. “Well, I’ll have to drag his metal ass down here soon. You should get some rest. I’ll see you soon.”

As Larry made his way up the long, spiral staircase, Garfield called out to him after a few moments of quick thinking and even quicker wit. “Larry?” The bandaged man paused his climb and turned around. “I think Doom Patrol sounds better than Doom Bunch.”

Laughing, Larry shook his head and continued up the steps. “I was wrong kid. I don’t just like you, you’re the best thing to happen to this house since sliced bread.”

* * *

 It wasn’t until a few days later when Chief had finally declared that he was to be given his own room that Garfield finally met Cliff has the metal man was carrying half his weight down a flight of stairs and into the basement. There was a slightly small double bed hidden by a curtain in the corner that Cliff helped him onto and rearranged the pillow’s behind his head so Garfield’s breathing didn’t come out so wheezy. “Chief said that we can get you a better bed once he gets the money.” Cliff shrugged turning away. “But this whole downstairs is yours. You can do whatever you want with it.”

“All of this… is mine?” Garfield looked around the room, incredulously. There was a bar on one side with a working fridge, a bunch of shelves all around the walls, a TV in the middle and more space than Garfield had ever seen belong to one person. “Really?”

Cliff cocked his head at Garfield, sitting on the chair beside the bed, which creaked ominously with the weight but didn’t break. “You ain't ever had your own room before?”

“Not really. My parents studied animals, so we travelled a lot.” Garfield said.

Nodding, Cliff looked around the room as if realizing what the room would look like to a kid as young as Garfield. “Makes sense.” He turned back to bed, where Garfield was watching him with wide, curious eyes. “Chief said that there would be side-effects from the cure he used to save you.” He placed a heavy hand on Garfield’s chest. “How do you feel?”

Garfield took a moment to think and Cliff gave him that moment in silence, his cold, steel thumb absently running over the skin on Garfield’s chest. “Different. Like there’s something inside of me trying to get out. It doesn’t hurt, more like a pulsing. A restlessness.” Garfield answered. He sniffed the air. “And everything seems… sharper now? Like I can hear Larry playing music in the kitchen and I can smell the chemicals from where Dr Calder is mixing up new potions but… I don’t know. It’s odd.”

Cliff did his robotic equivalent of frowning. “Well, make sure you tell Chief about those feelings when you get the chance.”

“Why? What kind of side-effects would that thing give me?” Garfield asked, suddenly more concerned that he had been in the past.

Instead of answering, Cliff reached out and lifted up Garfield’s arm, rotating it slightly so the green, leathery patch of skin was on display. “It’s getting better.” He observed. “It looked pretty bad when you first came in. Larry suggested cutting it away but it’s a good thing that it’s going away on its own.” Grunting, Cliff put his hands on his thighs and stood up, the chair creaking in relief. “Anyway, get some fucking sleep. I never can seem to get you to shut the fuck up other than when you’re snoring.”

Laughing, Garfield turned over as Cliff walked towards the stairs and turned off the lights. “Goodnight, Robot-man.”

Cliffs shout of outrage was heard over Garfield’s cackling. “ _Robot-man_?”

* * *

 “Now, Garfield, there are some rules that you’ll have to abide by if you wish to reside with us.” Chief had brought him into the library and sat him down onto one of the plush chairs. “Nothing too drastic, just a few to make sure we all stay safe here.”

Nodding, Garfield folded his hands over his lap, ready to jot down mental notes. “Yeah, sure.”

“First of all, you are not to leave this house,” Chief warned. “I need to keep everyone here safe, even though you’re able to walk about in the open, the others cannot. I don’t want any danger to come to them.” Garfield nodded his understanding. “You also cannot bring anyone here. I don’t want the information about this place to become public knowledge. You must listen to me at all times so I can guarantee your safety and the wellbeing of everyone in this household. These rules still apply for when I am away, regardless of how long. Do you understand?”

Garfield nodded again and raised his arm up and waited until Chief gave him permission to speak. “What if you need me to go to the town for groceries or things? New clothes or paying bills? I mean no disrespect,” he added hurriedly. “But I look the most normal out of everyone here, so if you’d like, I could go and run errands as payment for letting me stay with you because I don’t actually have any money.”

Looking skyward, Chief ran a hand over his chin. “I’ll think about that, but thank you for the offer. Until then, we will continue our days as usual but I require some tests to determine how my serum changed you.”

Biting his lip, Garfield nodded again in agreement and Chief placed a hand on his arm before making his way out the room leaving Garfield alone in the too-big chair to consider the “side effects” and “changes” the cure had caused him.

(And if he decided to buy some things for himself while he was out running errands in town, well, nobody would know and it's technically his home too anyway)

* * *

“And you’re sure nothing feel’s weird?” Larry asked again as he measured one of Garfield’s outstretched arms. Rita was in a chair, taking notes as her malformed leg wobbled on the floor. Cliff was off to the side, digging through a bucket for something apparently incredibly important. “You feel the exact same as before you were infected?”

“Why are you guys so sure that there were side effects?” Garfield laughed as Larry brought the measuring tape up to his ear. “Maybe there wasn’t any.”

The trio exchanged looks before going back to their respective tasks. “Take it from us, kid,” Cliff grunted, elbow deep in a large plastic tub. “With Chief, no matter what he does or how he does it, there are always side effects. No matter what.”

Garfield frowned. “I thought that you said he was a great doctor?”

“Oh, he is.” Rita insisted, turning to a fresh, clean page in her notebook once Larry called out the size of Garfield’s ears. “An absolutely brilliant doctor. He saved all of us when hope was lost and he helped many more like us. It’s just that sometimes his ways are unorthodox, or strange and sometimes don’t turn out the way he’d hoped.”

“All his cures are untested until he uses them for the first time on a patient that needs it.” Larry wrapped the tape measure around Garfield’s waist and called out another number to Rita who diligently jotted it down. “We’re the test subjects, the gunnie pigs, and even if he is sure that his research and medical knowledge is sound, he isn’t 100% positive until his patient makes it out alive.”

Frowning, Garfield tried to wiggle away from Larry’s probing hands into his stomach. “So you’re saying he could have killed me?”

“Unintentionally, but yes,” Cliff replied. He paused in his digging and popped up in a cascade of tools and medical supplies. He scrutinised a strange looking plunger before shaking his head and dropping it back into the box. He shrugged at Garfield’s shocked expression. “What would you expect? He can’t exactly test it on anyone. What do you think happened to us?”

“I’ve… never really thought about it.” Garfield blinked. He looked around the room at the people he’d been living with for a couple of months who had very obvious conditions and mutations. “I’d… honestly just assumed that you’d all been born with it and that it progressively got worse over time.”

Larry snorted and turned away, picking up a small medical hammer and pushing Garfield onto the table behind him so his legs dangled above the ground. “We’re all fuck ups in some way, kid.” Larry knelt down on the floor and lined the hammer with Garfield’s knees. “Cliff was a race-car driver who got into an accident. Chief removed his still working brain from his ruined body and put him in the tin can.” He pointed the hammer at Rita behind him. “Rita got in the way of some kind of toxic gas that made her cells unstable. She was kept in an institution for what… decades?” Rita nodded. “I was a piolet. My plane crashed and according to doctors, I was exposed to ‘negative energy’ and only given a few days to live. Chief saved me by wrapping me up in these special bandages and keeping all the negative energy I’d absorbed inside them.” He hit Garfield’s knee finally with the hammer and nodded satisfactorily when he involuntarily kicked.

“So…” Garfield said, looking at his friends with new eyes. “We have ‘Elasti-girl’, ‘Negative-man’ and ‘Robot-man.’”

Cliff sighed heavily with a shake of his head and made his way towards the door as Rita covered her giggles with a hand and Larry leaned back on one leg to look up at a smirking Garfield. “You little shit,” he laughed, raising his arm up for a high-five, which Garfield happily obliged. “I didn’t think I could love you any more than I already did but I think you took the cake.”

* * *

 They were all huddled in the corner down by the kitchen as the two beer-drinking and smoking teenagers explored the house. Rita had her arms around Garfield, keeping him safe against her chest and also supporting most of her weight on him, unable to keep her left side solidified. Larry had a kitchen knife he had grabbed on his way through and Cliff was watching the entrance carefully for the intruders.

Chief was pacing back and forth angrily with his hands behind his back. “Did you break my most important rule, Garfield?” He turned to glare angrily at the young boy huddled in Rita’s arms. “Did you leave? Did they follow you here?”

“He hasn’t gone anywhere, Chief,” Larry answered for Garfield with a pointed look towards the Chief. “Stop blaming him for everything that goes wrong.”

“I think they’re hunters,” Garfield whispered into the resulting silence of the standoff. “They’re carrying guns. They must have been in the woods on a hunt and saw the house. I think I heard them spraying the outside wall near my room with spray-paint before I came up and got you.”

“Can you guys just shut the fuck up?” Cliff demanded, taking another protective step in front of Garfield and Rita and effectively blocking Larry from Chief’s line of sight. “There are strangers in our god damn home who are going to see us and go tell the whole world that we exist and you fuckers want to argue?”

There was a loud crash from somewhere in the kitchen and they all jumped back against the wall, startled. “Do you think we can slip past them?” Rita asked with her face pressed into Garfield’s hair. “We could make it to Gar’s room downstairs and hide out down there. Cliff can stand against the door so they can’t get in and we’ll just wait them out.”

Chief nodded and looked towards the direction of Garfield’s room. “Excellent idea, Rita. Let us just-”

Suddenly, there was a loud _slam!_ as the door to their hiding spot suddenly flew open, hitting the back wall and almost ripping the door right off its hinges. Two thin, laughing boy’s strolled in like they owned the place- one with a cigarette dangling from his lips, the other with a can of beer clutched loosely in his hand and both with standard shotguns slung over their backs. They paused when they saw the group, who had huddled closer to the wall at the loud intrusion. Cliff stood firmly in front of Garfield and Rita.

“Dang Jack, I told you there had to be some folks living here,” the teenager with the beer can laughed, waving his hands and spilling beer all over the wooden flooring. “Just didn’t think they would be such fucking freaks.”

“Shut the fuck up, Billy,” Jack said pulling his shotgun off his back. Billy drained the rest of his beer and crushed the can, dropping it onto the floor. “Don’t talk to them. Pull your phone out, hurry the fuck up. Do you know how much money we could get from the police if we give them proof that monsters exist and that they’re livin’ here?”

Billy shrugged. “Nobody says they need to be alive for that. Just pop ‘em one and we’ll drag them back out to the van and drive them to town. Put ‘em on display.”

“I don’t know what it is you want, but we would appreciate it if you took it and left us in peace.” Chief bravely spoke up and attracted the attention of the boys onto him. “We do not wish to hurt you but we will not hesitate if you provoke us.”

Jack rolled his eyes and elbowed a sniggering Billy in the ribs who raised his phone at the same time Jack levelled his gun at Cliff, who was standing at the front of the group, using his metal body as a shield.

A raw, guttural sound wretched itself from Garfield’s lungs as he watched the movement of the gun and he arched his back and raised his head as his face shifted and re-formed. Rita slipped off of him and into Larry’s waiting arms as the others jumped away.

Garfield fell to all fours as his body morphed into a shade of green identical to his hair and the sound of rearranging bones echoed into the silence of the hallway. His clothes ripped away from his expanding body and his mouth grew fangs, his back sprouted a tail, all four of his feet grew talons. The first sensation Garfield realized was that there was no pain, just a tingling that rocketed through his entire being. The second thing was that he wasn’t entirely alone inside his head. There wasn’t so much a voice but a feeling, to bite, to scratch, to run, to jump. Though they were all shooting around in his mind like second nature, all calling for his attention, there was only one thought that he held onto against all others. To _roar_.

So he did.

A loud, cacophonous roar that seemed to shake the chandelier and flung spittle from Garfield’s maw onto the floorboards. A large green tiger now stood where Garfield once did and suddenly, he realized that the heavy feeling that had been inside him since he returned from Congo was this tiger- his tiger, him, he and the tiger were one- within him, urging to be released.

Prowling forward, Garfield approached Billy and Jack, his chest low to the ground, and growled in their faces. On impulse, he roared again, and in their fear, Jack tripped Billy on their escape and Garfield- the tiger swiped a hand out half-heartedly and clipped the edge of Billy’s gun, ripping it from his back.

His name was being called from behind him, worried and afraid and awed. “Fascinating,” Chief breathed as Garfield shook out his fur. There was power running through his veins and strength in the very pads of his feet and he roared again, loud and strong at the roof and something inside him hummed in approval. He wanted to run- wanted to break away from the walls and run through the woods to feel the wind rustling through his fur and the cold snow under his feet.

The tiger- it was hard now thinking of himself and the beast inside him as two separate beings now that Garfield knew it existed- wanted him to run, to play, to roar again and again because there was lightning running through his body and it would never go away unless he gave into the instincts of his new tiger pal.

But the longer he stayed still, looking through the eyes of the tiger at this seemingly new world, the impulses of the tiger itself almost overpowered Garfield’s own and he realized that while Garfield owned it and controlled it, the tiger still fought for dominance, for the authority of both beings.

Closing his eyes, Garfield imagined the green-haired, lanky boy he is and not the tiger he could become, who warred with him inside his belly at every moment of the day and slowly, his body shifted again back into the fur-less form of a nude Garfield, naked and shivering on the wooden flooring. “What the fuck,” he hissed, more to himself than anyone else, before he closed his eyes and his mind, and his tiger, retreated into darkness.

* * *

 “We should have known,” Rita cooed, one hand stroking down Garfield’s cheek and the other dabbing his forehead with a cool cloth as he slept heavily in his bed down in the basement they had desperately converted into something akin to a liveable area for a teenager. “He was showing signs of being different and we just ignored them when we shouldn’t have.”

Chief shook his head from where he stood to admire the shelf filled with Garfield's collectables and trinkets. “We could never have known. He never showed any signs that could possibly pertain to an ability such as this. I had assumed there would be one but just never thought it could relate so such transformative capabilities.”

Without looking away from Garfield’s sleeping face, Rita bit her lip and held back a growl worthy of the tiger they had seen not too long ago. “He isn’t some experiment,” she ground out. “He’s just a young boy whose life has just been flipped upside down forever. Try and be a little more sensitive to the situation please Chief.”

Behind her there was silence. “I’ll be in my lab if you require me at any point. Fetch me if his condition changes.” And then Chief was gone, walking up the stairs and out of the room.

Rita returned all her attention back to Garfield and wet the cloth in a small basin by her side before wringing it out and placing it back on Garfield’s forehead. “You’ll be fine Gar,” she reassured, despite not knowing if she were lying to him or not. “We’ll find out what’s going on and then you’ll be all good as new. We won’t love you any less for being part tiger.” She laughed, bringing her head down lower to whisper in his ear. “I think it might actually make us love you _more_. You were too perfect before.  And that was the coolest thing we have seen in a very, very long time.”

Garfield didn’t wake, and Rita continued to care for him well into the early hours of the morning.

* * *

 “Where’s Rita?” Larry asked when Cliff re-entered the kitchen.

“Back in bed. I think the strain must have gotten to her.” Cliff sighed and shook his head. “This shit is fucking stressful man… Larry?” When Cliff looked up, he noticed his bandaged friend leaning over the kitchen counter, his head bowed below his shoulders and his arms seemingly the only thing holding him upright. “You alright?”

“No, Cliff, I’m not alright.” Larry lamented as he turned around to face his friend. He waved his hand wildly around the room. “He’s just a kid, man. So much younger than the rest of us. It’s not fair to him to be stuck in here.”

Sighing, Cliff leaned against the opposite counter and crossed his arms. “What can we do though man? There’s no talking Chief out of anything and now that we know he’s one of us, _really_ one of us, he belongs here.”

“No Cliff, he belongs out there!” Larry pointed to the window, the outside world seemingly so far away. “He should be making friends and going on dates and learning new things about the world! Not rotting here like us.”

Cliff ran a heavy hand down his face. “Well, too bad for him. You know there’s nothing we can do. So he’ll just have to shut up and take it, just like us.”

“Yeah, but or accidents happened when our lives were basically over,” Larry said, pulling his glasses from his face and rubbing between his eyes. “His life was only just beginning and now it’s fucked.”

Shaking his head, Cliff pushed away from the wall and rested a heavy hand on Larry’s shoulder and Larry didn’t budge. “He’s one of us now, man. And honestly, being able to turn into a fucking tiger is the coolest thing that’s happened around here in ages.” He walked away, leaving Larry alone in the kitchen with his head in his hands.

* * *

 It was Rita again by his bedside when he woke up, her eyes on the large TV the someone, probably Cliff, had graciously brought down. She didn’t see his eyes open and couldn’t hear his light laugh over the sound of the movie playing. Garfield knew it must have been an effort for her to be down there and sitting upright in the chair because the majority of her face and arms were deformed and liquefied, resting as a puddle in her lap.

Sitting up a little, Garfield half listened to the tiger prowling inside him- his tiger- and half watched Rita with a smile. Eventually, she turned her head back down to the bed and gasped, placing a hand over her mouth and gripping the seat of the chair as if for support. “Garfield,” she breathed with tears in her eyes as if she had doubted he would ever wake up at all.

“It’s always you whose here when I wake up, isn’t it Rita?” Garfield grinned, reaching for her hand with a wink.

* * *

 For months, Garfield learned how to become one with the tiger, learned how to prowl and run and roar like the beast. Even as Garfield, there was always a second presence at the back of his mind that was even stronger each time he fell to all fours and green fur sprouted over his body, but over time they learned to live and work in tandem to become an almost unstoppable force.

Once, Garfield was called into Chief’s office and Larry was leaning against the wall while Chief himself was pacing back and forth. “Um… am I in trouble?”

“Not at all,” Chief paused his pacing and sent a sharp glare at Larry before continuing. “It has been brought to my attention that the… tiger side of you is influencing your decisions and your personalities without you realizing.” He sighed and ran a hand down his face. “So obviously, there will need to be some more testing involved.”

“What kind of tests…?” Garfield asked suspiciously, backing up slowly towards the door that he’d closed behind him with his entrance. He looked around the room quickly for any signs of Chief’s case or Cliff hiding in the shadows, who was the only one who could physically drag Garfield down to the lab.

“You are now part tiger, yes? Or always have been in some regard.” Chief sighed and glowered at Larry who Garfield could swear was smiling under his bandages. “So we will need to test you like a tiger, more than just your shifting and scaling out your tiger form compared to a tiger found in the wild.”

Larry stepped forward and put a hand of Garfield’s shoulder, effectively blocking Chief from Garfield’s view. “What Chief is trying to say, in his medical, roundabout way, is that he’s giving you permission to run about outside for a while. You’ve been feeling pent up here, right? I can see it, and every time you shift, you seem… distressed. Chief is letting you go outside for a while so we can test you out. Let you run about for a bit.”

“With supervision,” Chief added quickly, but reluctant to agree. “But yes. It has been brought to my attention that you and the tiger within you are two different entities that influence the other regardless on what form you take. So it would certainly benefit both of you to… get out for a bit. Regardless of my previous wishes and rules, as long as there is someone there to observe you and write results down at all times, I am willing to allow you a little leeway.”

Once their meeting was adjourned, Larry led Garfield out of the office with a hand placed heavily on his shoulder, basically bouncing out of his shoes in excitement. Garfield shyly reached up and covered Larry’s hand with his own. “Thanks for that Larry.”

“Don’t sweat it, kid,” Larry bowed his head and wrapped his arm around Garfield’s shoulders to bring him into a warm embrace. “You deserve a little joy every once and a while.”

* * *

“Oh yeah, ‘come on Gar, we’ll just go and fix this little thing, it’ll be really easy.’ From where I am, this doesn’t seem easy, Cliff.” Garfield mocked from where he was almost buried under planks of wood cradled in his arms, almost stacked higher than his head. “What the hell are we doing again?”

“Shut the fuck up and stop complaining,” Cliff grumbled from where he stood on a stepladder, nailing the wooden boards that Garfield was holding into the hole in the wall. “I’m almost done with this.”

“Yeah, but you’re forgetting that once I’m done helping you, I have to go to the kitchen so I can help Larry with dinner,” Garfield grunted under the weight of the wood in his arms and shifted to make them more comfortable in his grasp. “What happened anyway? Did you shove your hard head through the wall again?”

Cliff hammered on the wall harder to drown out the rest of Garfield jibe. “No, another one of Chief’s fucking experiments went wrong again. And it’s about time you do some chores around here. Rita and Larry let you off too easy- you live here, therefore you help out.”

“You act as though I’ve never lifted a finger all my life- _can I put these fucking things down yet_?” Garfield hissed when he felt a splinter embed itself into the meat of his hand. Cliff grunted his assent with a few words muttered under his breath that Garfield chose to ignore as he immediately dropped the plants to the ground where they clattered in a heap. He wiped his hands on his jeans and winced as the splinter was pushed deeper into his flesh. “Those are really heavy man, not all of us have super-strong robot bodies. I’ll just hand them up to you.”

Sighing heavily, Cliff ignored Garfield until the final board was hammered down and he rushed off to the kitchens at Larry’s exasperated call, and Cliff leaned against the newly-repaired wall with his arms crossed against his chest and laughter deep from his breast forcing a smile on his metal lips.

* * *

 “You look like crap,” Rita smiled softly as he measured out appropriate amounts of liquid medicine into a plastic syringe to go with the many tablets sitting on Garfield’s bedside table beside the glass of water. “I told you not to go out with Larry to move the snow.”

“Someone had to do it.” Garfield sniffled. “And you know that Cliff locks up in the winter. His joints and plates don’t do well in cold weather.”

Rita chuckled softly. “Oh, you don’t have to tell me, dear.” She stuck the syringe into his mouth and pressed down on the plunger before Garfield could object and he made a face as he was forced to swallow the unexpected onslaught of fowl-tasting medicine. “Larry was more than capable of handling it by himself, though I am glad that you helped him. I just wish you had worn more than that jacket.”

The jacket in question was still laying against the back of the chair where Garfield had thrown it the day before after coming inside from the chore and now he glared at it as if it had personally betrayed him. “I thought it would be enough.” He rasped honestly, throat raw.

Frowning, Rita ran her hand over Garfield’s sweaty hair and burning forehead. “Does your throat hurt?” She asked and Garfield nodded pathetically, pushing his head further into her gentle touch. A thought overtook her, twisted and wrong on many levels, but there wasn’t anyone around to catch them. “Hold on a moment.”

She darted up the stairs as fast as her wobbly legs would take her and skidded into the kitchen, throwing open the freezer and pulling out a tub of chocolate ice-cream. She grabbed two spoons from the drawer before she ran down to the stairs and sat heavily back at Garfield’s side, presenting him the ice-cream. “It may not be the best method of taking care of a cold, but it’ll defiantly soothe your throat for a while.”

And right then, Rita ultimately decided that everything was worth it for the pure, unbridled joy written in every line of Garfield’s face.

* * *

 They sat together on the large couch in front of the TV, eating popcorn and throwing taffy at the screen as the Wizard of Oz played its second rotation, the colours bleaching their skin and lighting up the darkened room. Garfield sat between Rita and Larry, his feet on the coffee table and the other side of the couch lowered slightly to the floor with the addition of Cliff’s weight

Chief had left for a weekend trip to Italy for another patient so loud laughter floated through the halls and the volume on the movie was turned up to full. Cliff was shouting loudly at the screen, comparing himself to the Tinman and Rita scolded him with a smile.

Eventually, Garfield felt his eyes getting heavy and both he and his tiger fell asleep within the huddle of his new, monstrous family who loved him more than words could describe, safe and comfortable in their tangle of limbs and heartstrings and gentle touches, contented with the thought that he had finally found a place he belonged and was accepted and welcomed with open arms and open hearts.


End file.
